Ok... I sort of do this thing for a living, and here are my thoughts:
1. The current most
popular browser screen is 1366x768. This is typically 13"-15" wide screen display, like what I'm using right now (13" MacBook Air). This category (13-15" display, wide or not) happens to be 99% of laptops I see people use these days anywhere (including travelers in lounges). When I open MMB on my laptop (not a netbook, a proper, average laptop), I see not much information on the first screen. I even tried zooming out to 50% and still don't see much. Scrolling down I don't see much at the same time either. The old MMB already has too much whitespace (doesn't even fit much in my 30" monitor but I still see my flight details without scrolling), this one adds even more whitespace...
2. I can say it does look beautiful. But for this kind of thing, usability is more important that beautiful. When I open MMB, I usually want to know: my flights details (number, booking class, destination) and my seat allocation. These are still there (you need to click on the flight to pop up details) but separating flight details and seat allocation doesn't really make sense...
3. The left nav menu seems to not look "clickable". It relies on hover, which as we know doesn't exist on tablets and phones either...
4. Since QF is in save-all-the-money-we-can mode, I can only see this change is done solely to increase the add-on revenue (baggage, seat selection, insurance, etc.). It really shows.
Seriously dude, if a lot of people whinge, it's possible (not always) that they do for a good reason. For one, I don't trust "experts" when they don't perform. In this change... it's not super bad but quite bad in terms of usability. I see myself using CheckMyTrip more after this